Tooting From Greater LA - II

I'm at the NAMI CA conference in Torrance. Above is a seven-second video I shot last night on my iPhone.

That's Nathaniel Ayers you're looking at and listening to. Nathaniel Ayers is "The Soloist," whose life is recounted in Steve Lopez's book of the same name and in a movie of starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.

Mr Ayers was a cellist attending Julliard when he experienced a major psychotic break. He wound up in LA's notorious Skid Row where he lived homeless for more than two decades. Mr Lopez, a columnist for the LA Times, discovered him on the streets playing a violin with two strings. What began as a reporter-subject relationship developed into a bond far greater. Steve was able to convince Nathaniel to move into public housing, but had some lessons of his own on how delusional thinking doesn't just apply to those with mental illness. In the end, Steve had to learn to accept Nathaniel for who he was rather than what he would like to turn him into.

Anyway, here we were, sitting down to dinner, when Nathaniel, with no introduction, got up on stage and started playing. Adlibbing. Very much Bach-inspired, but very free form with no breaks for a good 30 minutes.


After dinner, we were told we were going to view an incompleted and shortened documentary, "The Chorus," about life on LA's Skid Row. I braced myself to be bored out of my mind for the next hour, only to encounter the most incredible experience ever from nine years of attending mental health conferences.

The documentary followed six or seven Skid Row residents for several months. Gradually, we got to know these individuals and identify with them. We laughed, we cried, we got outraged, filled with hope, were swept off our feet and hit in the gut.

Then the lights came on and the people responsible for the video and some of the cast, along with Nathaniel Ayers, got up on stage. The image here is from my iPhone. I hope I get the name right here. This is Linda, who was also an extra in "The Soloist" and one of the star attractions in "The Chorus." She is belting out - and I mean really belting out - a Gospel tune.

The documentary is simply too good not to find a distributor. When it comes out, trust me, "The Chorus" is a must-see. As I said, the documentary and the live cast and crew experience, together with Nathaniel Ayers, constituted my most incredible experience in nine years of attending mental health conferences.

The Soloist - Hollywood Gets it Right

At age 11, it was evident that Nathaniel Ayers had a special gift. Beethoven was his idol. The cello was his passion. He attended Julliard on a music scholarship. He was on the cusp of realizing his dream ...

In 2005, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez happened to encounter a middle-aged homeless man playing a violin with two strings. Intrigued, Lopez pulled out his recorder and started asking questions. The homeless man's name was Nathaniel Ayers. He had attended Julliard ...

Two separate worlds. We see a homeless person - a stinking, babbling, and potentially menacing annoyance that we cross the street to avoid. What we don't see is someone's precious son or daughter. Someone who may have attended school with us. Someone who may have been doing well in school, was dating, looking forward to college.

Someone not too different than you or me.

Then - out of nowhere - catastrophe. The brain quits, no longer cooperates. Someone's world - theirs - falls apart, disintegrates.

Same individual. Two worlds.

But in the just-released film "The Soloist," we also see two people from their respective separate worlds, seeking common ground. The movie stars Robert Downey Jr as Steve Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers, based on the book of the same name.

Lopez' major problem in life seems to be racoons infesting his lawn. For Ayers, rats scuttling across the patch of sidewalk he rests his head on is a mere minor annoyance. Lopez tries to help. He uses a cello - with all its strings, you might say with strings attached - as bait to lure Ayers into a shelter on LA's notorious Skid Row.

Ayers responds positively to his new environment, but then worlds collide. Lopez naively assumes that Ayers can be helped simply by being medicated, but soon receives the education of his life. You see: Ayers may hear voices, he may have difficulty perceiving reality, he may have problems figuring his way around in our world. But to integrate him into our world, first one has to meet him on his own terms in his.

This is the essence of humanity. Appearances are deceiving. Strip away the surface stuff, strip away the preconceptions, strip away judgment and pre-judgment, and there stands a human being, proud, dignified.

There is Ayers - mighty, like a rock - telling Lopez in no uncertain terms where to get off with his paternalistic do-gooderism. The scene is highly disturbing. Ayers has successfully stood his ground - in his own world - but at what price?

This is not going to be one of those movies, we realize, where the person with severe mental illness gets a concert hall gig at the end (as in "Shine") or wins the Nobel Prize (as in "A Beautiful Mind"). This is all about scaled-down expectations and baby steps, and eventually Lopez wises up by embracing Ayers as his equal and by validating his reality.

For now, it is enough that Ayers is living indoors and off the streets and playing music. We may mourn a life lost and a dream shattered. But "The Soloist" forces us to come to terms with the fact that Ayers himself does not necessarily share that view.

We are learning, all of us.

Call it a conditional healing, an uneasy acceptance, the type of ambiguous conclusion that Hollywood notoriously refuses to trouble itself with. This time, it is different. I loved "Shine." I loved "A Beautiful Mind." But our understanding has come a long way since then. We have matured and so has Hollywood. An uplifting ending would have been a slap in the face to all of us. Hollywood has acknowledged this, and in so doing has met us on our own terms in our own world, the same world - it turns out - that we share with Nathaniel Ayers.

This is a terrific and complex movie, bound to stir both your passions and intellect in equal measure. Please - please - round up a crew of friends and head out to the cineplex.

Skid Row, Schizophrenia,The Soloist

Last week, the LA Times reported that College Hospital in Costa Mesa, 40 miles south of LA, "dumped" Steven Davis, whom they had diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, and schizoaffective, outside of Union Rescue Mission located along LA's infamous Skid Row.

Literally, the hospital loaded him into a van, drove him 40 miles north, and dropped him on the street. This is what they call a "dump." College Hospital dumped Steven Davis the way some people dump their excess garbage in shopping mall dumpsters - surreptitiously, with hopefully no one watching.

But the Union Rescue Mission was watching, and when they complained, the van returned - and dumped Steven outside another shelter.

The city attorney reported that College Hospital was responsible for dumping 150 mentally ill in this fashion over 2007-2008. Steven Davis was a key to the city attorney's office making its criminal case. As part of a settlement, the hospital will pay $1.6 million in penalties and charitable donations.The hospital denies any wrongdoing.

In case you are experiencing deja vu, Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, "Sicko," showed security cam footage of a 63-year-old homeless and disoriented woman, Carol Reyes, wearing only a thin hospital gown, dumped in front of the same Union Rescue Mission by Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower Hospital.

Criminal charges were filed against the hospital's officials, and Kaiser paid a large settlement. LA authorities have been cracking down on dumping.

Doing something about Skid Row is far more problematic, an approximate 4x4 square block area where 7,000 to 8,000 homeless - many of them with mental illness - sleep on filthy streets, conveniently out of sight and out of mind to the rest of the world.

On April 24, Hollywood will be giving the area a lot more visibility. That is the day of the much-anticipated release of "The Soloist," starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, based on a book of the same name by LA Times columnist Steven Lopez. The book and movie chronicle the unlikely friendship forged on Skid Row between Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, a gifted cellist who lost his mind to schizophrenia while attending Julliard.

We see only the homeless. But Nathaniel's story is all too typical. Think of schizophrenia as a developmental disease. Kids are leading normal lives. Then - at say age 17 - something happens. One minute they're doing well in school and looking forward to college. Then they start acting a bit strange. Then - bam! - all at once, they are robbed of their minds, their humanity - everything.

Just like that it's over. The illness has a poor outcome, made much poorer by our appalling health care system and the unconscionable way our winner-take-all society turns its back on people they view as losers.

I'm sure "The Soloist" will bring this out loud and clear. I loved "Shine." I loved "A Beautiful Mind." I'm sure I will be profoundly moved by "The Soloist." But if nothing changes for the better in this country as a result, then there will be no feel-good ending.

The Soloist trailer.